Thompson rushing bill into law

Congressman Glenn Thompson seems prepared to support Trumpcare, even in light of the Congressional Budget Office’s determination that 24 million Americans, including many of his constituents, will lose health coverage.

Thompson tells us the law, which was introduced last week, may be passed next month. While his constituents are racing to understand the law, Thompson doesn’t seem interested in studying how it will impact his constituents, or in hearing directly from them in a public, on the record and unfiltered town hall setting.

Thompson had moved to preemptively invalidate the CBO score, saying, “I don’t have a lot of confidence in the CBO process ... This bill will be subject to all kinds of alternative analysis.” Yet, as recently as 2012, Thompson held quite different views, as when he said on the House floor, “The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office served a devastating blow” to Obamacare. If the CBO was reliable then, why has it suddenly lost credibility?

In the same 2012 floor speech, Thompson, citing figures from the CBO, focused on access to health care as the metric by which to judge Obamacare. Now, however, Thompson says, “A nation’s health policy should not be about access to health insurance.” If the number of insured was the critical measure then, why is it not so now?

Is Thompson’s “alternative analysis” like the Trumpian world of untrue “alternative facts?” While Thompson rushes this bill into law, thousands of his constituents could lose health insurance.

This story was originally published March 16, 2017 at 10:19 PM with the headline "Thompson rushing bill into law."